Bribes and state secrets to stop story

Published Tue 20 Sep 2011

Issue No. 2270

Rupert Murdoch’s News International has made a £3 million offer to the family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. It is an attempt to settle the phone hacking case that led to the closure of the News of the World.

But, like other pay-offs from the paper’s senior executives, whether Rupert or James Murdoch knew anything about it will remain a mystery.

Meanwhile the Metropolitan Police has found new energy to pursue, not News International or its own officers who took bribes from it, but the Guardian newspaper. The Met is trying to use the Official Secrets Act to force the newspaper to disclose its sources of its stories about phone hacking.

The police are pursuing the newspaper over a number of stories including the one that revealed how News of the World journalists hacked into Milly Dowler’s phone.

Coincidentally, two senior Met officers were forced to resign over the scandal.

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